Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Cranberry Upside Down Muffins

I wanted to make Pandan Marble Cake so bad. Nevermind that my hand mixer is with mum. I'll make do with a wooden spoon or hand whisk, or so I thought. But with just two eggs left in the fridge, I had to forget about making pandan marble cake. I checked my pantry and there's just slightly less than half a cup of sugar left. What else can I make? Then I saw a can of cranberry sauce that I had bought a couple of months back. I remembered some time ago, I had wanted to try this recipe from Joyofbaking.com. I checked the recipe again and was elated that I have all the ingredients required. An egg was all that the recipe called for and nevermind that I only have slightly less than half a cup of sugar left in my kitchen. I was sure the cranberry sauce would make up for the lack of sugar.

So I made this Cranberry Upside Down Muffins and was glad it turned out just fine. Just a note of caution, do be patient when handling these babies. They need to cool for a while before you invert them out else the cranberry will not stick to the cake. I am speaking from experience! I took the pan out of the oven and started inverting one and was disappointed when the sauce did not stick to the cake. It left me wondering for a moment where had I gone wrong.

Feeling a little disappointed, I left the muffins alone and attended to my little girl who was busy with her schoolwork, then returned to the muffins once I was done with her. I inverted each one, and to my delight, the sauce sits nicely on top of the fluffy cake. So the moral of the story - Be patient and let the cakes cool before inverting them :)

Preheat oven to 175C.
A - In a large bowl, whisk together, flour, sugar and salt
B - In another bowl, whisk together milk, egg, oil and vanilla extract.
Using a spatula, fold B into A together till just moistened.
Evenly divide the cranberry sauce among the 24 mini muffin cups of a mini muffin pan.
Evenly spoon muffin batter over the cranberry sauce.
Place the mini muffin pan in the oven.
Bake for about 15 - 20 mins or until a pick/skewer inserted comes out clean.
Stand muffins for about 5 mins before inverting them on a cooling rack so the cranberry topping is faced up.